Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941
The morning that brought America into the war — and missed the ships that would win it.
Before dawn on 7 December 1941, six Japanese aircraft carriers turned into the wind north of Hawaii and launched more than 350 aircraft at the United States Pacific Fleet lying at anchor. In under two hours, torpedo and dive bombers wrecked Battleship Row: the Arizona blew up and sank with over a thousand men aboard, the Oklahoma capsized, and by the time the raiders turned for home some 2,400 Americans were dead. It was, in President Roosevelt’s words, “a date which will live in infamy”.
Yet the blow was less than decisive. The three American aircraft carriers were at sea and survived untouched; the fuel tank farms and repair yards that made Pearl Harbor a base were barely scratched. Admiral Yamamoto had gambled on a knockout that would win the war quickly — instead he had woken a far greater power, and the war would be decided by the very carriers his strike had failed to catch. Gathered here are the attackers, the fleet that sent them, and the Americans who would answer.
